He should have taken her up on the coffee, he thought two hours later. His eyelids felt like they were lined in sandpaper, and his mouth tasted like a dirty sock. He ran his tongue over his teeth and grimaced.
Finally a set of headlights turned onto the street. Steve Morgan’s black Trans Am. Mr. Midlife Crisis: driving a teenager’s sports car and cheating on his wife.
Mendez remembered interviewing Peter Crane during the investigation into the murder of Lisa Warwick— before Crane himself had taken the spotlight as See-No-Evil. Crane had tried to make excuses for his friend’s behavior.
Sara had given him the same out for being an asshole.
Boo-fucking-hoo, Mendez thought. He came from a tough background himself, but he didn’t use it as an excuse for bad behavior. And his mother raised him to treat women with respect, not lie to them and cheat on them.
He didn’t wait for Morgan to pull into the driveway. He got out of the car and walked across the street with purpose, coming up alongside the Trans Am as Morgan turned the key off.
Mendez smacked his badge up against the driver’s side window then shoved it back in his coat pocket. He stepped back just enough that Morgan could get the car door partially open to get out, only to find himself trapped between the door and the car.
“Is there a curfew law I’m unaware of?” Morgan asked calmly. He smelled just vaguely of alcohol.
“Where’ve you been all night?” Mendez asked without any preamble of false niceties.
“Working.”
“I’ve been past your office ten times tonight. You weren’t there.”
Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Ten times? That sounds like harassment to me.”
“Where were you?”
“I had a dinner meeting with a client.”
“Oh? Did you take her to that nice out-of-the-way little place in Los Olivos?”
Morgan looked annoyed. He worked his jaw a little back and forth like he was grinding his teeth.
“You spoke to Mark Foster,” he said and nodded. “Yes, I sometimes meet clients out of town. People here can get the wrong idea if I take a woman out to dinner.”
“Yeah?” Mendez said. “And I bet they really raise their eyebrows when you take that woman home and bang her.”
“I took Marissa to dinner,” Morgan said, maddeningly in control of himself.
Mendez would have been happy to have Steve Morgan take a swing at him. It would have given him a chance to knock the jerk on his ass, and then drag him off to jail for assaulting an officer.
“We met in Los Olivos to try the restaurant—the same as Mark did,” Morgan said. “I didn’t want to do dinner here in town because people like to jump to conclusions. I don’t need anyone calling Sara and upsetting her for no reason.”
“Or giving her one more reason to dump your sorry ass,” Mendez said. “Is that what Marissa Fordham threatened to do? Tell Sara the two of you were sleeping together? Did she give you the big ultimatum, Steve? Dump the wife or else?”
Morgan actually had the gall to laugh. “Clearly, you never knew Marissa,” he said. “She didn’t want a husband. She never let any relationship get that serious. She was very happy being single.”
Frustrated, Mendez said, “So you met a client for dinner tonight. Who?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Where?”
“In Malibu. At a private home.”
“Convenient. That explains how you can be just getting home at four in the morning. No closing time. Long drive.”
“You know, Detective, I don’t have to answer your questions at all,” he pointed out.
“No,” Mendez said. “Is that the tack you take with Sara too? You don’t need to answer her questions?”
“She stopped asking.”
Heat burned through Mendez like a flash fire. He stepped closer, leaning his hands on the top of the car door on either side of Steve Morgan. “You’re a bastard.”
“Yeah,” Morgan said without humor. “I am.”
Mendez leaned in closer. “Is this where you try to make me feel sorry for you because your mother was a junkie whore and you had it so bad you just can’t help being the way you are?”
He got his wish. Steve Morgan came with a right that connected hard into his mouth, busting his lip from the outside with knuckles and from the inside with his own teeth. He staggered sideways.
“Fuck you, Mendez!” Morgan said, coming away from the car, pulling his arm back for a second shot.
Mendez came up into his boxing stance, blocked the second punch and hit Morgan with two hard jabs in the face. Blood gushed from Morgan’s nose.
He stumbled back into the side of his car and bounced forward again, swinging too hard, too soon. Mendez grabbed the man’s fist, stepped to the side, and twisted his arm up behind his back. Using Morgan’s own momentum, Mendez swung him around and slammed him across the hood of the Trans Am.
Dogs all around the neighborhood started barking. A light came on across the street.
Mendez cuffed one wrist then the other behind Steve Morgan’s back, then turned and spat a mouthful of blood across the hood of the car.
“Thanks, man. You just gave me an early Christmas present,” he said.
He pulled Morgan up off the car hood and marched him toward the Taurus at the curb.
“Steve Morgan, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent ...”
39
“Did you have it coming?” Vince asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“Hell, yeah.”
Mendez tried to grin with only partial success. He had come up to the ICU straight from the ER. A little centipede line of fresh stitches knitted his swollen upper lip on the left side. Lidocaine still had a firm hold on that side of his face.
Vince had to laugh. “You look like a freaking half-wit, Detective Frankenstein. What the hell happened to you?”
They sat down at a corner table in the otherwise-empty ICU family lounge.
“I had a little run-in with Steve Morgan,” Mendez said, talking out the right side of his mouth. “Turns out he has a temper.”
Vince raised his eyebrows. “What triggered that?”
“I guess it was something I said.”
“Like what? Your mother was a junkie whore?”
“How’d you know?”
“You s
“Yeah. I said a whole lot of other shit before that, but he didn’t turn a hair. That one—he went off like the fucking Raging Bull.”
Vince felt a surge of pride. “That’s my boy! You wanted to find his hot button and you did. I hope you gave a good accounting of yourself in that fight, young man.”
“He came after me. I had to protect myself. I might have broken his nose, and the one eye was swollen shut. He’s still downstairs getting patched up. I left a deputy with him.”
